The cockpit of most mechs do have a 'ferroglass' window that a pilot can see out of. There might be a few designs that don't, I can't recall, but all of the current mechs being piloted do have the ability for a pilot ro see their surrounding visually as well as via the HUD.
Sorry all. Been swamped following the long weekend. Will move things along tomorrow, although I guess some of it is up to you all whether you are going to track the Phoenix Hawk or head for the mine facility.
Gunny: You are correct a +5 means you succeed on a five or higher.
Lloyd: Location Alpha is north and west of your current location by approximately 400 miles.
Is Notice actually useful? I plowed skill points and wasted a stunt on it and haven't rolled it once. Seems like Sensors is the BT catch all.
Also, what's the ECM Shroud aspect? It costs 2 FATE points to first activate and then invoke, so it must be amazing, right?
If it's not obvious, I'm thinking my stunts blow.
Notice for sure becomes more useful outside of a Battlemech. Just like skills like Stealth, Spycraft, Investigate, etc. Those encounters will certainly happen. Technically you all have only had one full encounter and really only been on the planet a few hours at most.
ECM Shroud is an aspect. The stunt allows you to create it without having to roll anything. It will just happen whenever you spend a FATE point. No need to beat any opposition skill or difficulty. Yes, you need to spend another FATE point to invoke it, but so can the others in the group. Also since it doesn't take an action to initiate the stunt, you can spend the point and then have access to the aspect for any action you do want to take (say a defend).
It may or may not be as good as other stunts, but again, it is a bit early on to know for sure.
I *have* been wondering what's going to happen when we have to get out of our 'mechs. I feel like all of us are more built for Battlemechs than being on foot.
To be clear, is the Industrialmech heading toward the mine or toward the dig site?
We aren't totally helpless outside of a mech. We'll need to get out to explore the mines, from what's been dropped so far. Charly and Gunny have a +2 to Shoot. Jack and Lloyd both have a +1, and Lapeidra and Markus both have a 0. I don't think we'll be particularly sneaky, but there's ways around that.
I haven't had my head on straight lately and completely forgot about the tanks. Oh well, it's what Lapeidra would do.
I am new to fate and have added some exploitable things to Meatbag:
High aspect: Sketchy Lyran noble
--Boon: Yes I yoinked that!
--Boon: I know that guy from a cardgame, and I hope I let him win.
--Flaw: Wait! There could be loot!
As a merc: Wait our logistics dont suck?
--Boon: With great preparedness comes great firepower
--Boon: Hej, I planned for just that!
--Flaw: S~!$, this is not going according to plan!
Military Experience:
--Boon: You will be Reconneutered! The Lyran commonwealth says "AUF WIEDERSEHEN DU KRATER!"
--Lyran Alpha strike drill!
--Flaw: "What do you mean we are outtonned?"
Wait there could be loot! Can probably be compelled right now.
I haven't had my head on straight lately and completely forgot about the tanks. Oh well, it's what Lapeidra would do.
There is a chance that the pilot of the digger will create a distraction at the mine. It almost sounded like he was concerned about something so important that it trumped everything else. That leads me to think they have one of his family members, and like the Locust pilot, he is heading back to free them before the s@#& hits the fan about Diego. If that's the case, he might cause a big enough distraction for us to get close enough to take those Whirlwind Cannons out. DM's description was they had extreme range, so this might actually be beneficial. That or they shred your Mech on sight...(Shrug)...guess we'll find out. I have a range of five with the LRM's, I'm not sure if that will match, or be shy, of the Whirlwind's reach.
AC/2 range is 6, so I'd imagine that's what we're looking at.
AC/2 range is 6, so I'd imagine that's what we're looking at.
That was my opinion as well.
BTW, I like the way the distance tracker come out using the Underscores. It's much clearer.
Apologies for not posting this weekend. I've been busy and haven't had the energy to put something together. I'll post tomorrow.
All: Since the tanks are basically immobile fortifications, I'm not giving them Defend rolls with piloting. That just doesn't make sense. Instead, I'm treating them as having a static defense of +3, slightly better than an average Overcome to account for their dug in position. So it will take a +6 or greater for a Success with Style on an attack.
Meanwhile, Steinchen nobles like to live extremely dangerously.
All: Since the tanks are basically immobile fortifications, I'm not giving them Defend rolls with piloting. That just doesn't make sense. Instead, I'm treating them as having a static defense of +3, slightly better than an average Overcome to account for their dug in position. So it will take a +6 or greater for a Success with Style on an attack.
Makes sense, I was noticing the missing Defend rolls.
All: Since the tanks are basically immobile fortifications, I'm not giving them Defend rolls with piloting. That just doesn't make sense. Instead, I'm treating them as having a static defense of +3, slightly better than an average Overcome to account for their dug in position. So it will take a +6 or greater for a Success with Style on an attack.Makes sense, I was noticing the missing Defend rolls.
I agree that makes sense.
That MechCommander intro looks so old now. :D
I am playing a lot of modded battletech (the current game), oh boy battletech advanced is a trip.
I lucked out an "relieved" Comstar of a 150 ton super heavy monstrosity with 2 hyper gauss rifles and 3 Ultra AC 5s.
I do slightly dislike how quickly the midgame is over though.
So, Ramming as a tank, throwing tanks, and melee mech vs tank.
In essence, some mechs, especially Atlas, can canonically pick up random things with their battlefists and use this for melee. I think there was also a thing in maybe the defense of Luthien against the Clanners where an Inner sphere Atlas kicked a Clan elemental (2tonish Clan power armed battle infantry) into the cockpit of another clan mech.
Tank turrets are occassionally, but rarely, used as improvised bludgeoning tools.
Ramming as a tank:
Occassionally was done in WW2. If its tank vs tank then typically by the Soviets. Why? The T-34-75 was hilarious outgunned vs Tiger and Panthers (and due to the vision issues in a T-34, frequently mistook Panzer 4s for Tigers or Panthers), so, if they couldnt get an ambush of it was "Charge Davai forward Cuka Blyad". Now, if you are accellating heavily in an *ergonimically challenged* tank you frequently end up not exactly doing Tank Ballet. So you also frequently end up straight up ramming the tank you are charging at, especially under WW2 conditions with a whole lot of smoke and chaos.
So, when you commanding officer, NKVD goon right next to him, asks you why you totaled your T-34 by ramming it into a German Tiger, do you say a) There was f*%+ing smoke everywhere, I couldnt see a damn think and the steering mechanism was messed up because comrade cousin Pavlov drove over an antipersonal mine or
b) I HAD THE VILE FASCIST TANK BEAST IN MY SIGHTS! BUT THE GUN DIDNT FIRE SO I RAMMED IT! ZA RODINU!!!.
Hint, B) gives you a medal A) more talking with the NKVD goon.
That is an interesting tidbit of history. Interestingly, it seems the Sherman design philosophy was the exact opposite of Soviet and German armor. The Chieftain on YouTube has a series about armor design in the interwar period.
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Soviet Tank design was kind of opposite of German tank design.
Soviet went for:
--Big Gun (the T-34 eventually got outgunned in late 43/44/55, before that it had a pretty drat good gun)
--Broad tracks
--Easy to build
--Decent armor
--Merciless stanardization
They ignored ergonomics, and did not pay enough attention to vision or communication (communication was a mess, only platoon leader tanks had a radio, and because the inside was really loud, communication inside the tank was frequently done by the commander "gently kicking" the driver on the right shoulder to tell him to drive right.)
Reliability later improved by having the later tank crew contribute to the building of their tank in Uralvagonzavod etc. . Which later enabled them to do field repairs on a fairly competent level. Ergonomics did improve a bit on the later JS-2 and then going into the early T55 series (although the BMP 1, well, my father was in the East German army and they called them "Kotzkübel", or "puke buckets", was still better in in a ww2 tank but yeah), of course, the Soviets had a thing with upper heights for tankers at 1m65, which is relatively smol, ergonomics with 1m80 guys are uhhmm, questionable.
Interestingly enough, Soviet tank artillery was well, reasonably nice to be in, resulting in a fair degree of comfort envy from Soviet tankers and especially mechanized infantry towards artillery.
Germans tanks were fairly nice to be in, and had very good communication and sighting equipment, but their artisanal approach and like, dozens of types for the Panzer 3 alone made the logistics a mess, the production expensive and ineffective.
So I did a little digging through the various Battletech rulesets to try and get a general base line for how much a mech can lift or throw. Basically, in actual BT, mechs can lift or throw up an object up to 10% of its weight if it is using (and has) two functioning hand actuators. (Total Warfare page 261. Tactical Operations - Advanced Rules page 90) So an Atlas can lift up to 10 tons, a Wasp up to 2 tons. This limit can be doubled with triple strength myomer (which doesn't exist in our current time period).
Now 10% seems a little low to me. I'd be willing to bump that up to say 25%. That would mean a Wasp could lift/flip over a 5-ton Savannah Master hovercraft or toss it a short distance. An Atlas could do the same thing to the Wasp. To actually do so would require the object to be immobile and succeeding on a basic Overcome action at +2. We could extend this a little to add the possibility for Overcome situations where a mech pilot flip it over even if the object exceeds the 25% limitation. This could reflect getting some additional leverage, creative piloting, or something else. But the Overcome difficulty increases by +1 for every 10 tons (round up) exceeding the lift limit. So in order for the 20-ton Wasp to flip the 60-ton Manticore it would take an Overcome at +8. ( A Wasp's 5 ton limit leaving 55 tons in excess so +6 plus the base +2.) To flip an immobile 20-ton Packrat vehicle it would be an Overcome +4. (5 ton limit leaving 15 tons for a +2 plus +2 base.)
Now since this is FATE it is possible to still succeed on a failure, but with a serious cost. I'd say the cost would depend on the weight difference, but things like burned out actuators, arm mounted weapon damage, etc. would be pretty usual. Kind of like throwing your back out when you lift something you really shouldn't have. ;)
I'd also consider making it +1 for every 5 tons in excess. This would make it an Overcome +13 for the Manticore (basically impossible unless a lot of FATE points are spent) and +5 for a Packrat. This probably aligns better with the limitations per actual BT, but obviously makes it harder for lighter and medium mechs to execute this kind of maneuver.
Any preference or thoughts from the group?
This seems colorful. Battlemechs themselves already defy engineering and break the laws of physics so why not.
I don't really care either way.
Sounds good from my end.
Work for me. I think I'll be going with something else.
GM, I was wondering if I could change my trouble. I think "Doesn't take failure well" fits Charly better the way I'm playing her.
She still doesn't grok people that well, so that much won't change.
I'm too tired for theater of the mind. Can we have a map of this complex please?
Hey all. We've got another person interested in joining the group and the campaign. I don't have a problem adding one more, but just want to check and see if there are any overwhelming concerns from the rest of the group? If not, I'll work her in as things progress within the mine or outside.
As for a map, I'll try to get something rough together tomorrow, although my day is pretty full so it may need to wait until Wednesday.
Finally I forgot to post the current situational aspects inside the central mining facility. Here they are:
Filled with Rusted Heavy Mining Machinery
Dimly Lit
Rickety Catwalks
Part of the Upper Reaches Just Collapsed
The pirates in the office currently have:
Behind the Barricades
Desperate
The party and/or civilians have:
A Bit of Cover
Know Their Way Around
Just asking, but can Engineering(Battlemechs) be used for other engineering rolls? I think Jack's focus is going to be on battlemechs and field repairs, so I was going to be more of a generalist, but I haven't got the skills just yet.
Just asking, but can Engineering(Battlemechs) be used for other engineering rolls? I think Jack's focus is going to be on battlemechs and field repairs, so I was going to be more of a generalist, but I haven't got the skills just yet.
A good question. FATE doesn't have a default for these types of specializations, but I do think they are relevant for BT. My solution would be that anyone with Engineering(Whatever) can attempt to fix/build something, but not having the correct specialization means there is an automatic Aspect created for the PC called Outside My Specialty and it is immediately Invoked to increase the difficulty of any Outcome or Create an Advantage action related to the missing specialization by +2.
And remember, failure doesn't have to mean the task doesn't get done, but it can mean you succeed but with a serious cost.
GM, I was wondering if I could change my trouble. I think "Doesn't take failure well" fits Charly better the way I'm playing her.
She still doesn't grok people that well, so that much won't change.
Sure but I think it should wait until after this current scene. I think then we'll give everyone an opportunity to make any character adjustments if they'd like.
I'm okay with another player, though it is starting to feel a little crowded on our little Leopard :D
Okay, I'm happy with that on both points.
I think Jack may be the better person to help Gunny with the lift. Charly has a point in computers, so she can help Lloyd hack the system. Jack's got some aspects that I think could help out with that better than Charly could.
And before I forget, again, I'm happy if another person wants to join. :)
THe more the merrier!
I ok with the addition as well.
Okay, I've created a very rough map of the interior mining complex.
The Office and catwalks all sit above the mining machinery, lift, and pumping station. Center spanning catwalks lead down into the pit while those on the side lead back into the rest of the quarters and administrative facility. The crane control is up above everything and the crane runs along tracks along the ceiling of the area except where its been damaged.
Gunfire from the Office can reach all the catwalk platforms except the two at the far eastern end. The circular platforms do provide cover, but a person is exposed moving on the catwalks. Gunfire can also reach the door side of lift, but not the pump station or the crane control.
The outer dotted edge indicates the sides of the pit or walls.
OK that changes a lot of things. I was under the impression that we needed to reach the catwalks from the floor level. Now it looks like we are currently on the same level as the office and need to reach the plumbing control room on the lower floor. Repairing the lift doesn't seem as necessary, considering we can reach the office without it. That being the case, could Gunny use the 3 he got on repairing the lift as a notice check to spot something he could use to provide portable cover. A table, door, loos piece of sheet metal, or possible a some of the machinery that could be carried and used for cover. The goal is to be able to provide a static circumstance bonus while navigating the catwalks.
Next question, can we tell how many pirates are in the office?
Gunny: Yes, you can Notice something that would work.
From what can be seen there are at least 8 pirates barricaded in the office. Two at each doorway and two others you've seen moving around behind the glass, one of which is likely Roarke.
Is there a path to the Pump controls? I'd still like to get to those and see if Lloyd and Charly can lock the pirates out of the system and start them up.
Charly: The catwalks lead to other platforms and ladders that drop down to the pump and machinery level. (Or up to the crane control.) But they are currently very open and subject to gunfire from the office.
Got ya. Welp, time to see if how good of a shot Charly is.
My intention is to try and provide cover for you and Lloyd while escorting you two to the pump room. Using something noticed in the room as a shield.
Gunny has a toughness of +4, which should help if he starts taking flack. At least that and whatever he finds to use as a shield. When ready, he will literally place himself Infront of whoever is being escorted, using the shield to protect himself, in order to provide cover for that pilot.
Going on a family vacation for a couple weeks. Will try to maintain regular posting but may not always succeed and posts will be succinct.
@Gunny: Sounds good to me. I think it might be a good idea to have Charly lay down some suppressive fire while you two run in.
@Lapeidra: Have fun. We'll try not to hold any lapses against ya. :P
...Well that was an atrocious roll...
I suspect, with them hunkered down in that room, it will likely take a 3+ to hit one of them until we breach the room.